


An Affair of Youth

by WinterRose527



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon What Canon?, Lost Generation, wwi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 17:53:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11583201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterRose527/pseuds/WinterRose527
Summary: He's a fixture of New York society, she's a debutante of old Philadelphia. They meet and as they try to sort through what they mean to each other, there is a war getting closer and closer.





	1. Chapter 1

It was a warm evening in Newport, with the gift of a light breeze that had not been present during the opaque heat of the day. The fireflies danced across the dusky sky, sparkling like the jewels adorning the debutantes scattered about the lawn. It was July in 1916, and though a war raged on in Europe, it felt like a very long way away to the guests at the Stark’s Independence Day party.

 

Robb Stark stood by the bar, a glass of champagne in hand as he listened to Theon Greyjoy prattle on about a girl he’d met. _I’ve been here before many times._

“She’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, I’ll tell you,” Theon said, though Robb hadn’t asked him to.

 

“That’s what you said about Roslin, and Jeyne before her,” Robb reminded him good-naturedly.

 

“Quit being a heel, Robb, I tell you I’m going to marry this one,” Theon said with a wistfulness Robb had never seen in his friend’s features. _This girl must be keen indeed._

“She know that?” Robb asked with a smile.

 

“She will soon enough,” Theon said with conviction he’d only ever heard when he was convincing him to have that last drink round the club.

 

He’s saved from having to respond when a loud chorus of laughter springs up from across the dance floor. It was a posh set of boys and girls alike, most of whom Robb had never seen before.

 

“Is that Jon Snow?” Robb asked Theon, gesturing to the group making the commotion.

 

“I’ll be damned, and he’s with the future Mrs. Theon Greyjoy. My father always said Yale would be the better choice than Harvard, and tonight he is proved right!” Theon said, pulling him towards the pack.

 

_He was right, she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen._

The girl Robb referred to had the slim figure that would become popular after the war on the continent, but had already gained favor in the colonies. She had fair skin and blooms on her cheeks and a waterfall of golden hair that betrayed her youth. She wore a pale pink bias cut frock and a diamond hair comb was her only accessory, helping her to stand out from the bejeweled heiresses that mingled throughout the party. _Not that she’d need help standing out anywhere._

“As I live and breathe!” Jon said as he saw them and Robb broke out of his admiration to embrace his friend.

 

“Now how did a Snow from the wilds of Chicago end up in Newport on a night like this?” Robb asked, noting the curious glance the beauty had given him when they’d embraced.

 

“Miss Margery Tyrell,” Theon said at his side, to a pretty brunette in a powder blue gown. “I dare say you’re following me.”

 

“I wouldn’t dare, Mr. Greyjoy,” she said with a twinkling laugh that made Robb think she just _might_ dare.

 

“Well then I am wounded indeed,” Theon said, clutching his chest, “And you shall have to nurse me back to health with a dance,” he said, extending his hand with a roguish smile.

 

Margery turned to the girl with golden hair, the beauty Robb had thought Theon was referring to, and handed her the glass of champagne she was holding. She placed her hand in Theon’s, as though it was all ridiculous, as though this was not the very end that she had planned as she had dressed that evening.

 

“Very well, though you had best mind your manners. My brothers are my chaperones after all,” she said gesturing primly to the dapper young men to her right and left. _So she is clever and pretty after all, the feigned indifference will only make him want her more. What is dinner without the hunt beforehand to a man like Theon?_

As they make their way to the dance floor, Robb turns back to Jon and his companions. One of Margery’s brothers whispers something in the beauty’s ear and she lets out a light peal of laughter that reminds Robb of wind chimes.

 

“So, tell me this tale,” Robb says to Jon. They were roommates this past year at Yale, their first, and had become fast friends.

 

The Starks were of the old New York set that had abandoned the tangible fortunes for the limitless ones. His father had played the stock market during the dip in 1910 and had come out grander than he’d gone in. The original fortune was in steel, like the Greyjoy’s was in iron, but like so many of the other families they had gambled it all on a bit of magic. The Starks had endured where others had failed.

 

On the other hand, the Snows were one of the first to move west after the revolution and had never left. Theirs was a smaller society than New York and Newport, though some said that the parties were gayer when the winds blew and the girls all looked as though they bathed in fresh milk.

 

“The tale is simple really,” Jon said with a glimmer in his eye nonetheless, “I’ve been spending summers with Willas every year since I was five, and this year we’ve taken on the task of chaperoning the girls as they make their debut.”

 

“A task is it,” a girlish voice comes from behind Jon. “I think that’s fooey.”

 

“I didn’t mean it like that, my little doe,” Jon said affectionately, “I only meant it by way of explanation.”

 

She let out a hmm sound and he let one out in return until they both smiled at one another, like this was a routine of theirs. Robb cleared his throat, desperate to understand what exactly ‘chaperoning’ meant.

 

Jon turned back to him with a smile, “So anyway, the girls met a new friend at the Tarly’s and she told them they should come tonight. And when I got a look at her,” Jon says, his eyes practically starry, “I knew I had to come along.”

 

“Well, welcome to Winterfell,” Robb said and Jon’s jaw dropped, “and you are very welcome as well, Miss –“

 

“Baratheon,” she said extending her hand to meet his. _What was that?_ He thought when their hands touched. There was a jolt, something he’d never felt before, present even through the fabric of her glove. By the way her hand flinched he knew she had felt it too, the slight blush to her cheeks only further proof. “Ella Baratheon, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stark. I see the resemblance now between you and Sansa.”

 

“Wait –“ Jon said turning to Ella. “The girl you met, that pretty redhead, was –“

 

“My little sister,” Robb finishes for him, realization dawning on them at the same time, just as Sansa in a grey and silver frock comes over to greet her new friend.

 

“Ella, darling,” she says as she walks over gracefully, “I’m so pleased you could make it.”

 

The girls kiss one another’s cheeks warmly, _is there anything prettier in this world than two beauties greeting one another?_

“Mr. Snow, Mr. Tyrell, Mr. Tyrell, I see you’ve already made my brother’s acquaintance. Robb, this is the lot I met on the Tarly’s yacht,” she said, completely oblivious to anything being out of sort.

 

“Miss Sansa, you look utterly divine,” one of the Tyrell brothers said, and turned to Robb, “I hope you’ll allow me to partner your sister in the next dance?”

 

He hadn’t quite gotten used to men asking him that question, though he should have been. Sansa had only come out this past fall, but he’d been bombarded with the request ever since. Sansa blushed prettily, though if Robb was not mistaken her gaze had flicked to Jon.

 

“Of course, please,” he said graciously though.

 

“And you, Miss Ella?” the other Tyrell, who had made her laugh before, said with a flourish.

 

“I suppose you’ll do,” Ella said with a smile. He waggled his finger at her and pulled her onto the dance floor.

 

They were a well-matched pair, though he was perhaps a bit more flamboyant than she was. Where he was all show, she was all easy grace. She followed him in the complicated steps as if she hadn’t even thought to do so. She was mesmerizing.

 

“There’s a boy after her, you know, some Southern heir to a mining fortune” Jon said in warning, “Rumor has it, he’s days away from proposing.”

 

_Am I supposed to be surprised? A girl like that was going to get more proposals than she could count. What is that to me?_

“That’s alright,” Robb said with a grin, “All I’ve got to do is convince her not to say yes.”

 

“Well then, here’s to an eventful summer,” Jon said, raising his glass to Robb.

 

“I’ll drink to that,” he said, meeting Jon’s glass with his own. And they did.

 

***

 

“I’ll tell you girls, sometimes I wonder if Theon Greyjoy is a gentleman at all,” Margery says with her twinkle of laughter.

 

“You don’t have to wonder, I can tell you, he isn’t,” her new friend Sansa quips.

 

Myrcella ‘Ella’ Baratheon covered her mouth in a giggle. She adored the Stark girl. Margery had advised her that she shouldn’t get too close to her, that her beauty was the only one who could compare to theirs, but Ella didn’t care a bit for all that. There was a steadiness to Sansa that reminded Ella of Jon and she gravitated towards it. Plus, Ella had always been of the opinion that she shone brighter in bright company than she did in dull.

 

It wasn’t that she was vain, she wasn’t. She just wasn’t stupid. She knew she was considered a beauty and she took it in stride, just like she did her wealth and status. Some things just weren’t worth fussing about.

 

“Sansa Stark!” Margery said as though horrified, though Ella knew she wasn’t, “You’ll make me blush.”

 

They were seated at a table underneath one of the great trees at Winterfell, overlooking the Atlantic. Ella adored Newport. She loved the parties every night and that her mother wasn’t with her. She loved the way the salt air mixed with the scent of lilacs and lingered on her skin.

 

“Doe,” a familiar voice called, “Is that tea iced or hot that you’re having?”

 

“Iced of course, I’m not mad,” Ella said, slipping into a tone more familiar than she should use in new company.

 

She couldn’t help being familiar with Jon. She had known him her whole life and he was more of a brother to her than the one she’d lost.

 

He was with Sansa’s handsome older brother, Robb. They were both in tennis whites, and though their collars were still crisp, their faces were red with exertion.

 

“Thank heavens,” Jon said as they ambled over.

 

“Miss Ella, Miss Margery, I’m glad to see you here again so soon,” Robb said courteously.

 

“Thank you, Mr. Stark. Your sister was kind enough to invite us back,” Margery said.

 

“Yes, I told Ella I’d give her a tour of the garden, but I can’t seem to find the energy to leave this heavenly spot,” Sansa said dreamily.

 

“Oh, please don’t trouble yourself, Sansa. It was only a passing thought,” Ella said, not wanting to be a nuisance.

 

“I’m not as charming company as my sister, Miss Ella, but you’ll find I’m a good deal less lazy,” he said, scrunching his nose at his sister affectionately when she let out a feigned gasp, “Perhaps you’d allow me to show you?”

 

She looked up at him and fumbled for a response. It was only right that he should offer, he was after all her host and there was nothing improper about a tour around the garden. Even still, it felt like the beginning of something she couldn’t quite place. She had a fear of things she couldn’t place but Robb’s eyes were so gentle, his manners so fine that she decided to ignore it.

 

“If it isn’t too much of an imposition, I’d be delighted,” she said.

 

“Please,” he said, like he meant it. She stood up, picking up her parasol and opening it, nodding her head in goodbye to the party as Jon settled into the seat she left vacant. _Some chaperone he is._

“This way, Miss Ella,” Robb said, gesturing to a path by the sea.

 

“You’re kind to take me, I know what a bore it can be showing people your own gardens,” she said by way of starting the conversation.

 

“If I may be so bold as to say so, I’d jump at the chance to watch paint dry with you,” he said and she ducked her head in embarrassment.

 

“That’s a pretty thing to say, Mr. Stark, though I dare say bolder still,” she says haughtily and to his surprise he let out a laugh. It was an earthy laugh that made her think of cold wet sand and fresh cut grass. 

 

“Pretty and bold, I can think of worse pairings.”

 

“I’m beginning to think that like Theon, you’re not a gentleman after all.”

 

“I promise I’ll give you no more cause to think that, Miss Ella,” he said, though his half-smile told a different tale. “It’s just this way,” he said, bringing her under a trellis to a shaded garden.

 

There were lilac bushes lining the edge and peonies taller than she and all different varieties and colors of flowers. It was like stepping into a dream.

 

“This is heaven, isn’t it just?” she says, turning to her escort with a smile.

 

“Just so,” he said with an earnest gaze that sent a blush up her cheeks.

 

_It’s a fine and dangerous thing, to be looked at that way by a boy like him._

***

 

Somehow she’d found her way to Winterfell for the third time that week. Apparently Theon and Sansa had insisted on Margery and Jon coming respectively, and so the whole party followed suit. That was the way of families like theirs, and Mr. and Mrs. Stark were gracious hosts who were apparently undaunted at being invaded by five youths.

 

It was an evening cooler than the last one she’d been here, but the fireflies danced just as before and the party, though smaller, was just as lovely.

 

“It’s the new fashion,” Sansa told her, their arms linked as they took a turn about the terrace, “All the families in New York are holding a cocktail hour before dinner now,” then she leaned her head in conspiratorially, “And after having attended a dinner party or two in New York, I can say it makes them a good deal more enjoyable.”

 

Ella covered her mouth again in a giggle, it seemed the Stark girl had a penchant for stealing it from her.

 

They were all settled out there, Willas was speaking with Mrs. Stark, Loras and Jon with Mr. Stark, while Theon and Robb spoke with Margery. The younger Stark boys had already been put to bed and the only one missing was the younger girl. Though she wasn’t out like her sister, she was near enough that a small family party was suitable for her to attend, even in mixed company.

 

Ella and Sansa turned when a gasp was heard and a glass was set down hastily. There, was a girl with a prettiness that would sprout into beauty before too long. She was wearing a truly enviable frock, or so Ella thought until she jutted a foot out in showmanship fashion. She’s wearing _pants_ Ella thought.

 

Mrs. Stark looked horrified, but Robb and Mr. Stark merely laughed as Arya pranced over and not for the first time Ella thought it was perhaps a different sort of family she’d stumbled upon.

 

***

 

The table was imbalanced, with an extra man in attendance, so Robb found himself at dinner in between Arya and Jon.

 

He had thought the evening might turn into tragedy when his mother saw Arya’s outfit, but she had taken it in stride. Five children had leant her a pragmatism not found in other society grand dames. She knew when to cause a fuss and when to purse her lips.

 

Ella was to his father’s left and Robb was surprised by how often he heard his low chuckle in response to something she said. _This is not a man known for laughter._

He must have been staring because Jon said, “You know, as her chaperone, I have to insist that you at least close your mouth when you’re looking at her.”

 

Robb blushed furiously but persisted, “Tell me about her.”

 

“Myrcella Baratheon, heiress to both the Baratheon coal fortune and the Lannister gold mines. Her grandfather was out in California before the 49ers,” Jon said as though he’d been asked many times before, stating the facts that would have been readily available to him in the Social Register should he so wish it.

 

“Tell me about _her_ ,” Robb insists.

 

Jon sighs, “Her daddy and her brother went down with the ship in 1912,” referencing the Titanic that had claimed so many, “She adores reading and detests cards. She’s fluent in French, Russian and Italian. She enjoys the mixture of lilacs with sea air… dogs, and you.”

 

Robb was in a trance learning about her, so snapped to Jon on the last, “What did you just say?”

 

Jon rolls his eyes, “She said that you’re a brute.”

 

 _That doesn’t sound like a compliment to me,_ Robb thought glumly, starting to regret how forward he was with her the other day.

 

“There’s nothing Ella likes quite so much as a brute,” said with an affectionate smile.

 

_Perhaps I won’t regret it just yet._


	2. Chapter 2

The cottage the Tyrells had taken for the summer was of the Georgian plantation-style, with wide Corinthian columns. The perimeter of the garden that stretched to the sea was bordered with honeysuckle and there was a separate structure down the lane that housed tennis courts and swimming pools, even a bowling alley. The residents that summer took to throwing a weekly party, and anyone who was anyone (or wanted to be) was at Ocean Drive on Thursday evenings.

 

Many of the guests who attended these parties there in the summer of 1916 would tell you, even years later, that the rumors were true. That the air smelled a little sweeter, the parties were a little gayer, and that the girls who lived there, especially when they were in the company of the charming Stark girl as they so often were, really were lovelier than anything Newport had ever seen.

 

It was considered very avant-garde that the girls travelled with only Margery’s brothers and a family friend as escorts, and when the group was joined by the eldest Stark siblings and the Greyjoy boy, the roguish one, they were a party unto themselves. Of course, they were gracious hosts, they each had a way of making you feel as though you had been the missing element they’d been looking for the whole time. This created an atmosphere so heady, that many found themselves leaving with friends they had once considered foes and a business deal had been struck on that very lawn amidst the honeysuckles that would shape the national economy for the next decade.

 

One of the girls, Miss Ella Baratheon was apparently days away from an engagement to a Mr. Trystane Martell, of the Georgia Martell’s, though you might not have guessed it when the young, handsome Stark heir lead her around the dance floor…

 

***

 

“It’s a fine evening wouldn’t you say, Miss Ella?” Robb asked her as he lead her in a waltz.

 

“I suppose I would, Mr. Stark,” she said, her eyes catching his, “The stars seem to wish to attend the party as well, they shine so brightly just for us.”

 

“You’re mistaken, Miss Ella. Les etoiles vous enviant,” he says in a perfect accent. _The stars envy you._

“So brightness is their wrath?” she asks him, fighting to keep her voice steady.

 

“So it would seem,” he says with an easy smile. He seems to enjoy the games that trouble her so.

 

“Then give me their ire,” she says, and as he turns her, she cannot help but tilt her head to the side, loving the feeling of the lightness of the breeze on her face and the steadiness of his hand on her waist. “For I have never known a better use for jealousy than this.”

 

“Nor I,” he says and his thumb strokes the hand that rests in his.

 

_Oh but you should not do such a thing._

“I can’t help it,” he says, in response to the thought she had not voiced.

 

“You must help it,” she says. _My mother wishes me to wed another, Grandfather too. You should not be so familiar._

The dance ends and she steps away from him, feeling colder than she had a moment ago.

 

“Ah, there you are, darling,” a voice like warm molasses comes from behind them.

 

“Trystane,” she says, and she feels Robb’s glance on her when she uses his first name.

 

He comes over to her, looking dapper in his tails and takes her hand in his, pressing a kiss to it. It was the same hand that Robb had just held, and he pressed a kiss right where Robb has rubbed his thumb. _As though he knows, and would undo the very etching of his skin on yours._

“May I introduce Mr. Robb Stark? He’s my dear friend Sansa’s older brother. His family has been so kind to us all,” she says formally, “And Mr. Stark, this is Mr. Trystane Martell.”

 

“She’s so formal, isn’t she? Must be that Quaker spirit,” he said referencing her family’s Philadelphia heritage, “Trystane,” he said and held out his hand.

 

“Robb, a pleasure,” he answered and gave no intention that it was anything but. “Is this your first time in Newport?”

 

“Yessiree,” Trystane said and it brought a smile to Ella’s face. She preferred his country charm to his practiced airs.

 

They had met at her debutante ball back in Philadelphia. He’d been in with his uncle on a business venture and he’d asked her for the first dance. And the second. And every one after that.

 

He was well mannered and gracious, intelligent and handsome. He was from the right family. She found that she couldn’t avoid liking him, even when her mother’s approval made her want to. _But I felt more at the barest press of Robb’s thumb than I did at the touch of his lips._

The thought made her dizzy which was not helped by the corset under her frock, and all of a sudden she stumbled.

 

“Miss Ella,” Robb said as he caught her, she had fallen in his direction after all.

 

She hadn’t thought that she was the swooning type, but as his hand cradled her head, the other holding her waist she thought perhaps it was a worthy vocation after all.

 

“Les etoiles ont gagne,” she says softly before losing consciousness.

 

_The stars have won._

 

***

He sat on the settee in Sansa’s bedroom, petting her dog Lady, while her maid helped her primp behind the dressing screen.

 

It was a ritual of theirs. He always sat with her while she got ready for a party. It was one of the things he missed most when he stayed at Yale for the weekend rather than taking the train to the city. The quiet calm before the storm.

 

In comparison to the rest of New York society, the Starks were close. He adored his other siblings and in turn, they all looked up to him the way they should to a big brother. Sansa was different though, his first sibling, only two years younger than he. They had developed a reputation since she’d been out in society for being bright and lively, and so there were always parties to get ready for. His name rarely appeared in the newspapers now without the line, “ _accompanied by his beautiful sister, Miss Sansa Stark”._

It had created some unease in female companions, there weren’t many who could outshine his sister to the press. Or him for that matter. She was his greatest friend and confidant, simple as that.

 

 It wasn’t that he hadn’t felt things for girls in the past, but he had never felt what he felt when he lead Ella Baratheon in a waltz. _The stars have won,_ she had said, right before she fainted. She was like a Greek tragedy, undone by the hubris of great beauty.

 

“Robb, does Jon have a girl?” Sansa asks timidly from behind the screen. She had been silent save for the unladylike groans of pain she’d uttered when her maid tightened the strings of her corset.

 

“Do you think he’d be mooning about you if he did? Do you think I’d let him?” he asks her with a smile, shaking his head _no_ at Lady.

 

“Mooning? Is that what we call it?” she asks as she comes out wearing a dark green beaded gown. She sits down next to him and there is a wistfulness to her, “Oh Robb, is it really?”

 

Theirs had been a quick courtship. It had been all whispered words and barely hinted touches. It had been a glass of lemonade with their mother and an over-eagerness to chauffeur Ella to and from Winterfell.

 

“What else could we call his twice daily calls and his utter lack of awareness in your presence?” he asks with a smile and a swipe to your nose, “He let me take Ella to the garden on our _own_ just to be near you.”

 

“Perhaps he just knew he could trust you,” she says, taking his hand in both of hers.

 

“I just wish I could trust me,” Robb says gripping them.

 

“What a pair we are, brother,” she says with a laugh, “Who knew we Starks were such romantics?”

 

***

“So will you?” Sansa asks her that evening on the Tarly’s yacht. “Oh please, it’s been so much more fun since I found you.”

 

 _Your presence has changed everything_ , Ella thought to herself. The summer was nearly over and neither girl could stand the thought of being separated, unsure of when they’d next be together.  

 

“I…don’t know. I’d have to ask my mother, but perhaps… a season in New York could be just the ticket,” Ella says with a slow smile.

 

She knew that Philadelphia society would feel suffocating after a summer like this. Though the old rules still dictated New York, there was an irreverence in her generation there that had not yet traveled south.

 

“I dare say!” Sansa said, “Leave it to my mother, she’ll sort everything, she always does.”

 

“Yes, yes!” they heard from behind them. Theon was standing back up and kissing Margery in full view of everyone, and when she wrapped her slim arms around his neck they saw the new diamond that had settled on her left hand.

 

_So for some it is that easy._

In truth, she’d been expecting Trystane to propose before he left. He hadn’t though. He’d been a perfect gentleman and had told her he’d send a telegram when he arrived in Georgia.

 

_I’d jump at the chance to watch paint dry with you._

“It’s settled then, I’ll come to New York.”


	3. Chapter 3

In the Autumn of 1916 a form of hysteria took over the ballrooms of 5th Avenue. It was widely considered that the United States of America would be at war with Germany before too long and the entire season began to feel a bit like the last days in Rome.

 

War has a way of making people forget things, the youth especially who were always the most affected, and so the society grand dames took to turning a blind eye to the raucousness that only a season earlier would have shocked them.

 

It just so happened that this was the Autumn Miss Ella Baratheon came to stay with the Starks. She and the oldest Stark girl, the beauty, were widely considered to be the great social success of New York. Though they had both come out the year prior, their friendship created a newness in the already sought-after beauties that allowed them to eclipse even the most charming of that year’s debutantes.

 

More weekends than not, Miss Sansa Stark’s elder brother, the charming Stark heir, took the train from New Haven to squire his sister around town. He was often joined by a roaring group of young men, including Mr. Jon Snow, of the Chicago Snows, who believe it or not was Miss Ella’s chaperone.

 

If anyone thought that was rather unconventional, a seventeen year old girl being chaperoned by a man who wasn’t kin, they certainly wouldn’t say it to you. In truth, Miss Ella was more well behaved than a number of girls who were much better chaperoned, and there was an ease to their relationship that reminded everyone of the eldest Stark siblings.

 

It was considered the mark of a good party, when Miss Sansa would show up on the arm of her brother, Miss Ella on the arm of her Mr. Snow, both laughing prettily behind gloved palms.

 

It was considered a better party still, when after hours and hours of dancing, in the spirit of finishing conversations, the beauties left on the arm of the other’s chaperone.

 

***

 

“I dare say, Miss Ella, what will we do when you leave us again?” Mr. Sam Tarly asked her as he lead her somewhat clumsily in a waltz.

 

He was a friend of Jon and Robb’s from Yale, the very reason she had met the Starks to begin with. More often than not he was a part of the fun-loving gang that pulled into Grand Central station on Friday afternoons.

 

His was a more subtle charm, he did not have the benefits of an athletic form or handsome countenance as some of the others, but Ella was enamored with him all the same for his steady grace. He was the heir to the Tarly sugarcane fortune and had only recently gotten back from his family’s plantation, where rumor has it, he’d met a local girl and fell in love.

 

“Oh I wager you won’t think a fig about me, not when Miss Jeyne Poole smiles so prettily,” she says, referencing the orphaned heiress his family had been hosting.

 

It was no secret that his parents were expecting him to propose any day now, and a man could do worse than a sweet and pretty girl with an outrageous fortune.

 

“I keep hearing that,” Sam says, “Yet I never seem to see it for myself.”

 

Though of course, a man could do better than marry a girl head over heels in love with another man.

 

“Will you settle for mine then?” she asked him playfully, she couldn’t help but flirt innocently when it made him blush so. _It’s so much easier with him._

 

He smiled at her as the dance ended and said, “You know I keep hearing how clever you are, but if I hadn’t seen it myself I wouldn’t believe it after a question like that. Nothing pertaining to Miss Ella Baratheon can be considered any manner of settling.”

 

***

 

“And how do you find New York, Miss Roslin?” Robb asked the pretty Frey girl as he lead her in the dance.

 

“Quite diverting, Mr. Stark,” she said through lowered lashes, “Charleston I fear, will seem small after such a season.”

 

_Yes, but you have every intention of never returning to Charleston._

At twenty years old, Roslin Frey was considered something of a survivor. She had been one of the premiere debutantes of her year, rivaled only by Talisa Maegor, though that year had passed three years ago and she remained unwed. If anyone was perfectly honest with themselves, they would have said that the fault lay not with her but with her _family_. They had been fundamental to the confederacy during the war and while others had been long forgiven for that, the patriarch of the family, a Mr. Walder Frey was a prickly, weak man who had burned more bridges from here to Charleston than he could count. A year Robb’s senior, he had never minded partnering her in a dance or two, though there was a pushiness to her now that he had not seen before.

 

“That is how I feel of New Haven, Miss Roslin,” he said honestly, “But I fear the whole world will feel small after New York.”

 

He heard a giggle from across the room, and turned to find Theon partnering his sister in a dance, as Margery danced with her elder brother Willas. The Tyrell’s too had decided to spend the season in New York in preparation for Margery’s wedding, which was widely being discussed as the event of the season.

 

He bid the Frey girl goodbye and crossed to where Theon and Sansa had joined Ella, Willas, Margery and Jon. Loras was at Harvard, unable to get away due to a fencing competition.

 

“Yes, he’s coming next Friday,” Willas was saying to Theon, and then turned to Ella, “Though of course you already knew that didn’t you, Miss Ella?”

 

Robb’s glance flitted to Ella in her blue frock, who blushed at Willas’ words, “I suppose I had a telegram to that effect.”

 

_Trystane Martell comes again._

 

“He’ll expect an answer this time,” Margery says knowingly and Robb is surprised by the swiftness of Sansa’s glare.

 

“Oh Margery, don’t embarrass me,” Ella said as she ducked her head.

 

_So he’s asked her then._

“Don’t worry, Doe, you take all the time you need,” Jon said to her protectively, then mischievously, “But first… a dance!”

 

She let out her melodic little laugh as she put her hand in his. He lead her in a dance, the new one and Robb’s eyes could not help but follow her graceful form.

 

“Come on, big brother, you owe me a dance,” Sansa says quietly at his side.

 

He leads her out there and they fall into step.

 

“It happened last time he was here,” Sansa explained without him having to ask.

 

“So I gathered,” Robb said. He hadn’t been here that weekend, he was stuck in New Haven studying for a politics exam.

 

“She’s put him off, Robb,” Sansa said reassuringly, “She… knows that she’s supposed to say yes but she can’t bring herself to.”

 

“Perhaps she should,” Robb said, feeling a rawness in his chest.

 

“Don’t say that! What’s happened? Have you met someone new?” Sansa says, and there is an anger in her blue eyes.

 

“Would that be so terrible?” he asks her, “If we’re both happy anyway?”

 

The truth was, he had met another girl. A Miss Jeyne Westerling of Chicago. She had known Jon from back home and when he’d introduced them Robb had been impressed with her shy smiles and quick wit, and had liked the way those smiles had deepened when he told her so.

 

_Impressed is one thing, you fool, enamored is quite another._

His sister Sansa at seventeen had been nurtured so gently, had experienced so little of the world, yet she looked up at him sagely and said, “But would you be?”

 

***

 

The flurries of the Winter of 1917 were accompanied in turn by a flurry of engagements. War was getting closer every day, and so the children of Fifth and Park Avenues hurried to find happiness, just as the children of shopkeepers on Main Street.

 

The engagement of Miss Ella Baratheon to Mr. Trystane Martell on New Years Eve came as a surprise only to New York society, the rest of the country had been expecting it for months. For it was only those in attendance at the Tyrell-Greyjoy wedding where Miss Ella Baratheon was the maid-of-honor and Mr. Robb Stark the best man, that had seen the way she had blushed even prettier than the bride when he lead her in a dance.

 

Of course, Mr. Robb Stark had his own happy news, when his much more hurried courtship with Miss Jeyne Westerling turned into an engagement only three days after Miss Baratheon’s announcement.

 

With the former Miss Margery Tyrell now married, and Miss Ella Baratheon engaged, all eyes turned to the Stark beauty to see what prize she might catch…

 

***

 

“I suppose what I’m asking is, may I ask Sansa to marry me?” Jon asked him sheepishly on a rainy March day on the train to Grand Central.

 

“Aren’t you supposed to be asking my father?” Robb said with a smile.

 

“I will, of course I will, but I need to know,” his best friend said earnestly, “I’ll make her happy, I promise.”

 

Anyone in their right mind could tell that Jon Snow meant what he said, and Robb knew him better than most. He had predicted this from the start, even before the Independence Day party. Sansa was kind and Jon was good and the two of them had such a shared steadiness that anchored the people around them. He had seen it the first time he had seen them dance together and had been expecting this question for months.

 

“I know you will, I can’t imagine two people more suited,” Robb says shaking his hand.

 

He tried to ignore the girl that sprung to mind when he said so, as she was not his fiancé.

 

***

 

“So what do you think?” Ella asked as she stood in Sansa’s dressing room in a wedding gown.

 

“Turn to the side,” Sansa said as she picked a pastry off the plate beside her.

 

Ella did as she was told, tilting her head back to look at her friend.

 

“I think,” Sansa said, licking the lemon curd off her index finger, “That you will be the most beautiful bride this country has ever seen.”

 

“Only until August, when you supplant me,” Ella says conspiratorially.

 

It was the end of March and their weddings were scheduled for July and August respectively.

 

Jon had asked Sansa only a couple weeks prior, but the couple had an eagerness to be wed that she had not yet felt.

 

“Is that the hour already?” Sansa said as she looked at the clock, “I’ll ring for Shae, we have to dress for this evening or Mother will have my head.”

 

Hours later, they descended the stairs of the Stark townhouse with their arms linked and their heads inclined towards one another as they walked into the parlor. They had made many entrances such as this and the only trouble with them doing so this evening is that they cast a rather wide shadow that the bride-to-be shivered under.

 

It was Robb and Jeyne’s engagement party (it had been delayed when the former had gone to Alabama for military training) and though the Miss Westerling in question was an undoubted beauty, it was unfortunately remarked upon often that she lacked a certain charisma that people had begun to expect in his company.

 

Ella and Sansa of course, would never be so unkind as to say so. In fact, they rather adored the girl.

 

“Oh darling, you look lovely!” Ella said as she clasped Jeyne’s hands in her own.

 

The girl, two years older than her looked at her kindly, “And you, Ella dear. Even Robb thinks so,” she says, nudging her fiancé with a familiarity that caused her stomach to churn.

 

“Is that so? What a pretty thing to say,” Ella said and she found she could not meet his gaze.

 

“There you are darling,” she heard from beside her.

 

“Trystane, how clever you are to find me,” she says, trying for that familiar tone she’d just heard and noting that it had fallen flat.

 

“Come with me, sweetheart, there’s someone I want to introduce you to,” he says excitedly and pulls her away before she can say goodbye. _Just as well._

***

 

Jon Snow married Miss Sansa Stark at the bride’s home on Fifth Avenue three days after the United States declared war on Germany. As it was rather hurried, it was perhaps not the grand affair that the August wedding they were meant to have would have been, but the bride was beautiful and the groom was beaming and all in attendance would tell you that it was the best wedding they’d been to in years. There was an innocence to it that the country could feel slipping away and so it became a testament to the old ways, the last great event of the old-world order.

 

The maid-of-honor, the Miss Ella Baratheon, had post-poned her own wedding when her fiancé was one of the first to ship out for training. The best man and bride’s brother too had post-poned his wedding to the Miss Jeyne Westerling when he and the groom signed up. Apparently, it hadn’t appealed to either of them to marry in such a hurried fashion.

 

It was the first society wedding where the groom and his best man were in uniforms rather than tails and many in attendance would tell you that they felt safer knowing these brave young men would stand between them and the enemy. 

 

***

 

 _How fine he looks,_ Ella thought as she sat in an alcove in the Stark’s parlor looking at Robb Stark in his uniform.

 

Her fiancé had already left for the war, though his father had secured him a post far from the fighting. Robb and Jon would be headed for the front lines before too long. There was a tightness in her that had been present ever since Jon told her he’d signed up.

 

Robb caught her eye and smiled, and all of a sudden the room felt very hot so she stood and fled down the stairs to the back garden.

 

“You’ll catch a cold standing out here like this,” his voice came behind her.

 

“Still, I’ll be safer than you,” she said haughtily as she turned in time to catch his smile.

 

“I should hope so, Miss Ella,” he said stepping towards her, “Why else would I go to war if not to make it safe for you to stand in a garden, with only a chill to threaten you?”

 

_Why do you love to toy with me so? If there is a crueler game I haven’t found it._

“I’m not sure your fiancé would consider that a very good reason for your separation,” she said primly.

 

“No, she said as much anyway,” he said with a grim smile.

 

“She didn’t –“ she said but couldn’t get out the words.

 

“Jilt me?” he asks, “Not in so many words. I believe the phrase was _You men go off to war and you expect us to just wait, well I’m done waiting Robb Stark_.”

 

“Oh Mr. Stark! She doesn’t mean it, she’s just… afraid to lose you,” Ella said, _unless she is a fool._

“Perhaps, but she has now,” he says, then peers to look at her, “It’s just as well. Now I am free to protect your right to walk in any garden you choose.”

 

“You’re forgetting, Mr. Stark that I am still engaged,” she says breathlessly.

 

“Forgetting? No, never that,” he says, taking another step forward to which she takes a step back. He pulls her by her waist to him and she can’t help the gasp that escapes her. She has never been touched like this. His other hand finds its way under her chin and he raises it so she is forced to meet his gaze. “But after all, you don’t look old enough to marry, anyway.”

 

There’s nothing a girl hates quite as much as being told by a handsome man that she’s too young for him. Still, there was something in the way he said it, something hopeful that made her not mind it so much.

 

“You’re a right brute,” she says. And then he kisses her.

 

If anyone had stepped into that garden they would have told you that on a cold April day, as a war raged on in Europe, a seventeen year old girl bloomed right in front of their eyes. They wouldn’t have mentioned that it was in the arms of a boy who was not her betrothed, because if someone had stepped into that garden, they would have forgotten about any world in which the young pair in front of them was not destined for one another.


	4. Chapter 4

_October 1, 1917_

_Dear Jon,_

_Thank you very much for your last letter, it cheered me greatly to hear the comforting cadence of your voice in the words on the page. Sansa and I sit waiting for the post each day, hoping for word from one of you, the boys at the front._

_I suppose you heard about Loras Tyrell? My Uncle Renley was with him at the time, and he said that until the end, he spoke of us and the marvelous summer we had under the honeysuckle blooms._

_I hope that wherever you are, you too remember what it smells like when the lilacs mix with salt air and remember the flicker of fireflies dancing across the night sky. Keep these memories safe, dear brother, and let them keep you warm._

_I’m not supposed to know yet, but Sansa shared your wonderful news. I can’t wait to meet your baby, Jon, what a lucky child this will be to have parents such as you._

_I heard you saw Trystane not too long ago, he said that you and Robb have been promoted already for acts of valor. I would like to congratulate you on your promotion, but encourage you to commit no more of these acts. I am not so innocent that I do not understand that this means you put your life at great risk, that you were lucky to make it out at all. This world has enough heroes, but we only have one of you. Remember it._

_To answer your question, of course you can tell Robb that he can write to me. It would bring me joy to know that he too is well._

_Affectionately yours,_

_Ella_

_***_

_October 14, 1917_

_Dear Miss Ella,_

_It feels strange to address you as such in writing. So perhaps, given that it’s war (and in war all courtesies get suspended) you’ll allow me to simply call you Ella, as I hope you will call me Robb._

_I was happy to see you over the summer once more at Winterfell. It felt like stepping back into a dream, finding you in the garden there. It made me understand why seasoned soldiers will tell you that home leave ‘makes you soft’, for being reminded of beauty and innocence such as yours has made the front seem darker and grittier still._

_I have to say what a joy your letter was to Jon. He read the part about their only being one of him over and over. It does a soldier good to know there is a girl at home with a lovely furrowed brow worrying about him. Sansa remarked something of the same in her last letter to me, and I know that my heart filled with the same pride and devotion._

_It appears I’ll be getting leave again soon. I hope that when I am next home that I will see you and I will find you well. I so very want you to be well._

_Sincerely,_

_Robb_

_***_

_November 2, 1917_

_Dear Robb,_

_I suppose that courtesies are little use to us now, with what you are fighting against, so I will allow us to suspend them in our letters._

_I am so happy to hear that you are well and that you are coming home soon. Your mother is overjoyed and Rickon and Bran have been studying the newspapers constantly so they will have something to talk about with you. I tried to tell them that perhaps you’d want to speak of something other than the war, but they looked at me with pity, as though I was a silly girl for suggesting it._

_I envy the assuredness of children, now. It feels like for our generation now, after seven months in this ugly war, there is so much uncertainty, so much doubt. It is a miracle to see boys still so steadfast in their beliefs, their innocence reminds me what it is all for._

_I do so hope that home leave does make you soft. It is a scary thought that the hearts of our generation could break so simultaneously, and so I say come home, and come home often. Be reminded constantly of what it is to feel, to love, to hope. Keep that part you as safe as your head and your heart and the tips of your fingers. Hold onto it for as long as you can._

_With all my very best,_

_Ella_

_***_

_November 2, 1917_

_Dear Sansa,_

_Jon shared your news, congratulations dear sister! I cannot believe I’m to be an uncle, I am going to love that kid something fierce._

_I’ll be coming home soon on leave and I should be with you all on Thanksgiving. It seems like such a far-away thing, Father cutting the turkey and Mother hand tying the cranberry wreaths._

_Will Ella be there? I have not received an answer to my letter, though it has only been a couple of weeks. Sometimes when I see nurses entering the camp I think of the way you two used to descend the staircase, arms linked with one another. Do you still do that? I hope so, it is a memory that keeps me when things get dark._

_Jon will not be able to come home, but he will be home at Christmas time, god-willing, and he has asked me to bring his love home to you. War makes romantics of us all._

_To answer your question, yes I had heard that Jeyne married, she wrote to me herself to tell me. I am sure she made a beautiful bride and I wish them all the happiness in the world, truly I do._

_I look forward to seeing you very soon, dove, so that I can properly thank you for giving me and Jon so many good things to think of here on the front._

_Your loving brother,_

_Robb_


	5. Chapter 5

Ella sat in the library of the Stark’s townhouse on Fifth Avenue on a settee next to Sansa and her rapidly expanding form. They had just had a marvelous Thanksgiving dinner and they had retreated for a little quiet.

 

“Shh, shh, don’t draw attention,” Sansa said as she took Ella’s hand and placed it over her stomach. There, against all reason, was a little fluttering.

 

Ella’s green eyes met Sansa’s blue ones and they both had tears in them. _Oh what a wonder this is, this little life._

 

“Is that the baby?” Robb nearly shouted and both girls turned to him.

 

“Shhh Robb, don’t be such a ninny!” Ella said before she could help it, and the two Stark siblings both started to laugh.

 

“I’m sorry, _Ella_ ,” he said, ostentatiously forgoing the courtesy of Miss after she had mistakenly called him by his first name, “I’ll be quieter,” he said stepping into the library as though on a covert mission.

 

“Then come here,” Sansa said with a sigh and his face lit up at being included.

 

He settled on Sansa’s other side and reached out with a tentative hand until his sister grabbed it and placed it over her stomach. Ella was not quick enough to move hers out of the way and she tried to hide the sigh that escaped her lips when his fingers brushed against hers.

 

“Wha-“ Robb started.

 

“Patience,” Sansa said with a knowing smile, motherhood making her wise already.

 

All of a sudden Robb let out a startled little laugh, a tear falling from his eye as he looked down at Sansa’s stomach. She laughed as well and leaned her head against his as they both looked in wonder.

 

“This is everything, sister,” he said and broke away, pulling her to him so that he could press a kiss to her forehead, “This is the hope we fight for. You dear, dear girl, you will be the savior of us all.”

 

***

 

He didn’t want to leave. _Home leave makes you soft._ He’d never tell them, but it was hell on earth.

 

He did his duty, he believed in what he fought for and he would give his life for it if the time came, but by god if he didn’t hate to leave them. _Leave her._

It was the evening before he left for France and there were things he realized needed to be said to her. They were things he shouldn’t say, things he had no right to say, but the things he would regret not having said if death found him on the field of battle.

 

“Just this,” he says, by way of greeting, “This is enough to keep me on all the nights I am gone. An image of you, sitting by the fire in my home.”

 

She looks up at him and if he didn’t know any better he would say her breath caught. She smiles though and says, “What is it you wrote to Sansa? _War makes romantics of us all._ ”

 

“I fear I cannot blame the war,” he said, his face turning serious and her smile died. She stood up, backing away as though he might ensnare her. “Ella, please-“

 

“You shouldn’t-“ she says, though something in her eyes tells him that she’d like him to. “You can’t kiss me again.”

 

“I know,” he said, truthfully. He hadn’t even considered it, though he wanted to with every part of him.

 

She nods, believing him and her posture relaxes ever so slightly.

 

“Are you still going to marry him?” he asks her.

 

“I don’t know…” she said and then her green eyes widened as though she cannot believe she said it.

 

It is that look more than her words that calms him. S _he is fighting a battle inside herself, between who she has been told she should be and who she is and she is fighting it for me._ _It is enough for now._ “Then you will send me off to war a happy man.”

 

“Oh I would not send you off to war at all,” she says, wiping a tear from her eye, “None of you.”

 

He had never seen her cry before, had never seen her angry. It did nothing to diminish her beauty and it made him ache to hold her in his arms.

 

“Just say you’ll stay here until I get back, Ella,” he says crossing to her and taking her hands in his, “Just say you’ll wait to make any decisions until I’m home with you.”

 

She looks up at him with confusion now, “You don’t know?”

 

 _Know what?_ His eyes ask hers.

 

“I’ve trained to become a nurse…I’m going to France next week. Didn’t Sansa … I thought she would have told you,” she says quietly.

 

“You are not going!” Robb said, surprised with the quickness of his anger, “That is no place for a girl like you!”

 

“You don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?” she asked him, her anger matching his own.

 

“I have the highest opinion of you! You are sweet and gentle and innocent and there is no place for it in war!” he said, not caring an ounce for propriety as he took her face in his hands.

Assuming she was not caught in an air strike, there would still be all manner of horrors awaiting her. Disease, for one, but he had been there. He’d seen it. The amputees, the victims of mustard gas. _It is hell on earth and you were made for better._

“And where is there a place for me? The ballrooms of Fifth Avenue? Sometimes it feels like every boy I’ve ever danced with is dead. _Loras, Willas, Sam, Willem, Renley._ They’re all gone and thousands more every day! How can I leave them to suffer on their own? _How can I live with myself?_ ”

 

“Don’t do this,” he begged her. _I need you to stay like this, please._

 

“It’s already done.”

 

***

 

Miss Ella Baratheon left New York on a cold day in December of 1917. Those remaining would tell you that her departure signaled the true end of the time before the war, after all, it had always been so easy to forget there was a war at all when her laughter erupted from a crowded parlor.

 

The news of Mr. Theon Greyjoy’s death missed her by a week and it is said that his widow left New York shortly after to sit in her grief in the family’s home in South Carolina. She of course had lost both of her elder brothers only months before, and those who ran into her on the train did not recognize her as the girl who had once tugged her husband, then fiancé, into the pool in their evening wear.

 

Miss Sansa Stark remained the last great beauty in New York, though without her companions, brother, and husband, she was rarely seen except on her twice daily walks through the park with her father.

 

It was those days in which they truly felt like a nation at war. In the cold months, when it felt as though all the beauty had been stolen from them.

 

***

 

 _This is hell on earth_ , Ella thought as she purposefully cleaned the body of a man who had been left blind by mustard gas.

 

All around her there were cries, men begging for their mothers, and for death, _Sweet Jesus thank you for my deliverance_ she had heard as one soldier bled out. Beyond that was the sound of gunfire and bombs getting louder by the hour. The Germans were getting closer, every day.

 

To her, they were all Robb, or Jon, or Trystane, Theon, Loras, Willas, Sam, Renley. When they clutched her hand as their limbs were severed she was their mother and their sister and their wife and she felt their losses each acutely. She had been in France for three months and there had been too many to count.

 

“Nurse Baratheon, with me,” one of the doctors said and she stopped her task to run over to where a solder had just been brought in.

 

The man had warpaint covering his face and blood leaking from his abdomen. She focuses on the wound, trying to discern which organs might be at risk.

 

“It’s his spleen,” Ella says, “They’ve ruptured it.”

 

“I’ll get the thread, keep pressure on it, keep him awake,” the doctor said.

 

She places her hand over the wound and the solder lets out a guttural cry. She brushes the curly black hair away from his face.

 

“That’s right, Corporal, you get to be as loud as you want,” Ella says, reassuringly, “But you are going to live, do you know that?”

 

“If you say so, doe,” he says.

 

Her eyes snap to his face, “Jon?” she asks and suddenly she sees his features through the paint. “Oh it is you. Oh Jon you’re going to be fine, I promise,” she says, taking his hand in hers and pressing a kiss to his palm.

 

“Sansa said you were here… Robb too… I didn’t believe them,” he says, choking out a laugh.

 

“Robb was so angry with me,” she says, knowing that he’d love a bit of gossip, “So angry.”

 

“Of course he was, he loves you,” he says, right before he loses consciousness.

 

“Doctor! Quickly, he’s passed out, hurry!” she says, but the doctor is busy amputating someone’s leg.

 

She looks at the boy in the bed and knows that she only has moments to save him, _and who could I trust to care more of his survival than me?_

She runs to get a needle and thread, sterilizing it quickly. Her fingers only shake for a moment, before she thinks of Sansa and the little flutter she’d felt when she placed her palm to her stomach. _He’s going to be such a good father_ , she thinks as she breathes deeply and purposefully starts to stich.

 

***

 

Robb had been in a craze when they took Jon away. The bastard had saved his life, pushing him out of the way of a bullet _that was meant for me_. He had killed five Germans after that, it didn’t help.

 

It had taken days to get back to the camp, days of mud and death and cold that never dissipated. He’d lost two more soldiers before he got back and he lit a cigarette and tried to hold back the tears that came.

 

Finally he got permission to go check on Jon and he scanned the camp for tent 218.

 

“Excuse me,” he asked a doctor, “I’m looking for Corporal Jon Snow.”

 

“Right that way, the Romeo on the first bed on the left,” the doctor said with an affectionate smile. _Of course, the nurses will be fluttering about him._

He walks over to him, and finds him laying shirtless, a dressing around his abdomen where the bullet had entered.

 

“Brother,” Jon said in a raspy voice.

 

“I’m so sorry,” Robb said, kneeling by his bedside, “You’re such an idiot, I’m so sorry.”

 

“S’Alright,” Jon mumbled, “An angel saved me,” he said with a loving smile.

 

Robb rolled his eyes, “Look I know you saved my life and everything, but you’re still married to my little sister. I don’t need you besotted over some girl.”

 

“It wasn’t a girl,” Jon said, “It was an angel.”

 

“Stop calling me that, Jon,” the sweetest voice Robb had ever heard said in slight annoyance behind him.

 

Robb turned and felt dizzy at the sight of her. Her golden hair had come half unpinned and there was blood on her cheek and her hands. _By god if she isn’t the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen._

 

Her smile dies when she sees him and she lets out a sob. He is on his feet in a moment and he pulls her into his arms. She smells like lilacs and salt air and she feels like home and she is holding on to him as if he does too.

 

_This is no place for a girl like you._

***

 

“To think,” Robb said, lighting a cigarette, “I tried to convince you not to come. If I had, Jon would be dead.”

 

She holds her hand out for the cigarette and he gives her an incredulous look, and she realized he had never seen her smoke before. She raises an eyebrow at him and he offers it with a small smirk. She takes a delicate little drag, holding it with steady fingers before passing it back.

 

“I don’t think he’d be dead,” she says with a shake of her head, “Though his scar would be a good deal more ugly. I’ve always been deft with a needle.”

 

He looks at her like she’s crazy until she bursts out laughing and he shakes his head at her, laughing too. It felt so good to laugh after the months of pain she’d had. She hadn’t expected to see him, though reason had told her he would not be far away. She couldn’t explain her reaction when she saw him and he hadn’t asked her to and that mixed with the sheer relief of Jon’s survival and his presence made her punch-drunk.

 

“I’m sorry… for that, by the way,” he says, peering over at her, “For the way we parted.”

 

“Don’t give it another thought,” she said, taking the cigarette back from his outstretched hand, “You knew what it was like and I didn’t. Had the roles been reversed, I’d have been just as adamant.”

 

“Do you regret it?” he asked, “Coming here?”

 

She looked into his blue eyes and they reminded her of the lawn in Newport overlooking the Atlantic. His lips were pink like the peonies in the garden at Winterfell. _He looks like home_.

 

“Not today.”


	6. Chapter 6

_April 6, 1918_

_Dear Sansa,_

_My dearest congratulations to you on the birth of your baby boy, Theo. I know that you are a wonderful mother already, and I look forward to spoiling him to bits. Robb was right, he’s the hope that we all fight for. It is such a godly thing, for you to have brought new life into the world amidst all of this._

_I assure you that tales of my heroism have been vastly exaggerated by Robb and Jon. I like to think fate brought us together in this nameless French town, not just for his sake, but for mine. For all of ours. We had a wonderful few days together before they moved onwards, and when I looked up to the stars while they joked and laughed I could almost believe we were in Newport._

_We spoke of you, mostly, and Theon and Margery, Sam, Willas, Loras. We spoke of that evening that Margery and Theon had a proper row, she had been caught flirting with one of the Brackens I believe, and she had decided to close the argument by pulling him into the pool with her. She was in that powder blue frock she wore the first time we came to Winterfell and he was in his tails and when they came up they were laughing and the argument was forgotten._

_You should see how they love you, darling. It is like they have created their own language, using only the good words when they speak of you. They speak of you with wonder and awe and so much pride that your heart could burst from hearing it. They speak of you as if the sheer memory of you is all the armor that they need. You send them into battle feeling infinite just for having known you._

_Jon told me right before he lost consciousness (please tell me he told you that part, it was only for a few minutes, I promise) that Robb loves me. If it were true, I think that I would throw away every plan, every option, everything, for him. It has always seemed such a game to him, as though he liked unsettling me, but to what end I knew not. The only time I caught a real glimpse of it was in the library when I told him I was coming here. I had never seen anger such as that._

_Oh Sansa, is it true? If it’s not, then I will content myself with being Mrs. Trystane Martell, a far better fate than I deserve no doubt. But if it is…_

_Of course, I have no right to ask you. If I were in New York with you I wouldn’t dare, but I have seen a bit of the world now. I have seen men die, civilizations crumble, I have seen hope, and fear, and pride. All these things I’ve seen make me feel very old, and very alone. I do not wish to be. I can make him happy, if only I could be sure._

_It’s April 6 th, we have been at war for a year. It feels like longer, doesn’t it? _

_Please know that you and little Theo are in my prayers. Be well, and trust we will all be together again soon._

_My deepest affections,_

_Ella_

_***_

_May 7, 1918_

_Dear Sansa,_

_I do not appreciate being called an idiot by my little sister, even if she is the mother of the greatest human being in the world. Say hello to little Theo for me, and tell him that his Uncle requests he teach his mother to respect her elders._

_To answer your question, of course I love her. But you know that already._

_I have loved her from the moment I first saw her. Have I ever told you about that? Theon had told me he met the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and when he gestured to the group she was with I assumed he meant her. I thought, perhaps, that I was going to have to challenge my best friend to a duel and was regretting that it had gone out of fashion._

_I remember her haughty tone when Jon mentioned the ‘task’ of being her chaperone and I thought, who is this girl?_

_One evening, on Ocean Drive, I told her that the stars envy her. In French. Can you believe it? Me. That evening was the first time I thought she might feel something too. Trystane arrived and there was something in her eyes, and all of a sudden, she was in my arms (she had fainted). I could live a thousand lives and never forget the feel of her golden hair as it fell over my arm like a waterfall._

_I’ve never been more afraid than when she told me she was coming here. She accused me of not having a high opinion of her. As though I thought she was incapable, or selfish. I was the selfish one. Her lightness is the greatest gift in my life and I could not bear to lose it._

_I was so wrong, so very wrong. She saved Jon’s life, which of course you know. You should have seen him, the way he looked at her. He called her an angel and I believed it. She stitched him herself, and when I found her she had blood on her cheek and on her hands and yet still, there was that light. I realized then that it is not her innocence, not the dew of girlhood still fresh on her skin, it is something internal, integral to her very being. I held her in my arms and she felt like home and I wished, oh how I wished, that she could be._

_To answer your other question, of course I don’t want to die unhappy and alone. Not a very kind thing to say to a lonely man in war, hmm little dove?_

_On the evening of your wedding, I kissed her. Did she ever tell you that? That kiss created new countries, it ended ancient grudges, it was everything. To kiss a girl like her on the brink of war… there are no words._

_But she is engaged. She’s engaged to someone that her mother wants her to marry and her grandfather wants her to marry. She’s engaged to someone charming and handsome and wealthy. There are no words for that either._

_So, dear sister, I tell you this. I have loved Ella Baratheon since the first moment I saw her, and it is going to be her countenance that flashes before my eyes when I meet my death. I love her, I love her, I love her._

_Your hopeless brother,_

_Robb_

_***_

_May 20, 1918_

_Dear Ella,_

_It’s true._

_Love always,_

_Sansa_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to beg for comments, but I'm so curious to know what everyone thinks!


	7. Chapter 7

It was strange to be back in a city. Her heels clicked on the pavement and the grey London sky felt further from the battlefields of France than the lawns of Newport.

 

She was staying at the Ritz Hotel, and waking up in the fluffy comforter and being drawn a bath made Ella feel as though she had transported back in time. There were maitre’ds in livery and stationary on the desk and for the first time in months, everyone called her “Miss” rather than “Nurse”.

 

It was late June, the earliest she had been able to get away, and she found herself wishing she could cross the Atlantic in time for the Stark’s annual Independence Day party. She had dreamed of it the night earlier, Margery in a sparkling frock with laughter in her voice, Theon roguish in his tails. Willas and Loras eager for a dance. _How many ghosts will I know before I’m done?_

Of course, she had noticed the way her palms twitched on the train ride to Charring Cross. She was no longer accustomed to idleness, she was now used to falling into bed at night exhausted and spent. _Will I ever be content to do nothing again?_

Ella entered the ivy bordered doorway of the US Embassy and gave the porter her name. Before too long she was escorted down a long hall to a very fine corner office, overlooking the key park outside.

 

“You can wait here, Miss Baratheon, he’ll be with you in a moment.”

 

“Thank you,” she said with a slight shake of her voice. _It’s been a year since I saw you last._

“Darling,” a voice came from behind her.

 

***

 

In the summer of 1918 Mr. Trystane Martell, of the Georgia Martells, took a wife. She was golden haired and charming, an heiress.

 

Of course, she was not the fiancé that many had been expecting he’d marry. Rumor has it, the beautiful Miss Ella Baratheon walked into his office at the US Embassy on a warm June day and said her goodbyes. Three weeks later, Trystane Martell married the daughter of an earl.

 

Two months after that, he was dead.

 

***

 

_September 26, 1918_

_Dear Robb,_

_Trystane is dead. He was on honeymoon in Italy and fell to his death while hiking._

_It is hard to imagine that people still die for reasons unrelated to the war. I look around at all the young men lying in the small hospital cots. Some of them have been sliced by barbed wire, others have bullet wounds that will never heal, some are blinded by substances they can’t understand. I wonder how many of them would have been wise enough to stay to the trail. I suppose you think it unkind of me to say so. Perhaps it is._

_I mourned him, not as a fiancé perhaps, but as a friend. As someone who should have lived longer, someone who should have seen us win the war, someone who should have turned twenty two. Even still, I feel unkind when I think of you, and all that you are risking, and all that you are risking it for, and how flippant others can be with the gifts they have been given._

_I guess what I’m trying to say is, I love you._

_I know its terribly forward of me to say so, and perhaps you’ve gone off me, but as this war draws to a close I find myself more and more afraid. We are so close to the end, I can taste it, and I am worried that I will lose right before we win._

_Jon and Sansa seem to think that you love me too, but even if you don’t, it causes me no pain to say it. I love you, and I’ll never not love you again._

_Ever yours,_

_Ella_

_***_

_October 8, 1918_

_Dear Ella, my love,_

_Has it only been two years that I’ve known you? Sometimes it feels like I have waited a lifetime for those words. I suppose in a way, I have._

_I was sorry to hear of Trystane’s passing. Though I only ever knew him as an obstacle to my happiness, he was a charming one. Don’t be afraid to mourn him, sweetheart. He was a remnant from a past age, not made for the dawn that is upon us, but sometimes I feel as though we have to mourn, have to feel the losses acutely every time to keep us young. After all, we are still so very young, you most of all._

_You are right, the war is drawing to a close, it is evident along the front lines. The Germans fight with a madness now, something that can only be described as the hysteria of the damned. It makes them more dangerous, but more reckless too, and we will prevail as long as we keep steady heads and steady hands._

_Sansa wrote to me not long ago, and she told me that you think that I like to unsettle you. As always, you are right. But she told me that you fear it is a game to me, and while I dearly love to play, I assure you it is not._

_When I first met you, I fell in love. I fell in love with the bloom in your cheeks and the haughtiness in your tone, I fell in love with the way my sister greeted you and the way Jon protected you. But you, my darling girl, were still so young, you had not yet learned to rebel. I took it upon myself, bit by bit, to teach you._

_Do you remember walking in the garden at Winterfell that first Summer? I was not just teasing you when I said that there are worse combinations than pretty and bold._

_You see, I thought the only way you’d grow to love me is if I could unsettle you. Unsettle you from Philadelphia society and your Mother’s rules. From Miss this and Mr. that, from laughter behind gloved palms._

_So imagine my surprise, when you, the refined and charming Miss Ella Baratheon, took to war. I grew so angry with you, so very angry with myself. Angry with you, for leaving, angry with myself, for paving your way._

_Yet even still, I have never loved you more than when I saw you in that little town in France with blood on your cheek and pins lost in your hair. The days we spent together could define a generation._

_So, sweetheart, be forward, and brave, and most of all, safe, until we are together again._

_Your humble servant,_

_Robb_


	8. Chapter 8

 

It was a cold night on the Atlantic, with the gift of a warm fire that had not been present on so many nights of the war. The gold rimmed champagne glasses were constantly being filled so that the bejeweled debutantes scattered about the room could toast constantly. It was November of 1918, and though the war had just ended in Europe, it felt like a very long way away to the first class passengers of the USS Margaret.

 

Robb Stark stood by the bar, a glass of champagne in hand as he listened to Petyr Bracken prattle on about a girl he met. _I’ve been here before many times._

“She’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, I’ll tell you,” Petyr said, though Robb hadn’t asked him too.

 

“That’s what you said about the girl in that village in Normandy, and the one in Toulouse,” Robb said good-naturedly.

 

“Quit being a heel, Robb, I tell you I’m going to marry this one,” Petyr said with a wistfulness that reminded Robb of a very different night, with a different friend.

 

“She know that?” Robb asked with a smile, though there was a pang in his chest.

 

“She will soon enough,” Petyr said with conviction.

 

Robb is saved from dwelling on the past when a loud chorus of laughter springs up from across the dance floor. It was a posh group of boys and girls, most of whom Robb had never seen before.

 

One though, he definitely recognized, “Who has Jon met now?”

 

Petyr grabs his arm, “The future Mrs. Petyr Bracken. I always knew going to war would be worth it!” and pulls him across the floor.

 

As they are walking over, Jon catches his eye and smiles. He nods his head in Robb’s direction and the girl he had been speaking to turns around. _He was right, she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen._

She had the slim figure that had now become the fashion on the continent, a waterfall of golden hair, and blooms in her cheeks. She wore a green frock that was perhaps not avant-garde, but nevertheless suited her petite frame and fair skin. He could not help but note the mist in her eyes when she saw him.

 

“Miss Ella Baratheon,” he said, though he was surprised he could get words out at all, “I dare say you are following me.”

 

Ella’s green eyes go wide in surprise, but she doesn’t miss a beat and says, “I wouldn’t dare.”

 

He clutches his chest and says, “Well then I am wounded indeed, and you shall have to nurse me back to health with a dance.”

 

She hands her champagne glass to Jon and turns around, and as if it is all ridiculous, as if it is not what they had been waiting two years for, she places her hand in his. _There it is. There’s that feeling I hope I never get used to._

“Very well, though you had best mind your manners. Jon’s my chaperone after all.”

 

***

 

Three days after the Armistice was signed, Mr. Robb Stark journeyed home on the USS Margaret. On board with him, was his brother-in-law Mr. Jon Snow and, as luck would have it, the former Miss Ella Baratheon.

 

Mr. Stark married the former Miss Baratheon in the Great Room on the second evening of the journey. The captain performed the service and Mr. Snow gave the bride away. While many had been anticipating rather different nuptials for the heir and heiress, all in attendance would tell you that it was the best wedding they had been to in years.

 

Those aboard the USS Margaret would tell you it was not at all a rare occurrence to come across the young couple dancing cheek to cheek, whether there was music playing or not. Mrs. Robb Stark, who is said to be fluent in French, Italian and Russian apparently declined her husband’s offer of a honeymoon away and has instead insisted upon a holiday in New York. Mr. Stark readily agreed, as he is rumored to do frequently for his new wife.

 

***

 

“So?” Robb asked her.

 

“No, you couldn’t possibly!” she says, her eyes widening in wonder as she looked around her.

 

“Couldn’t possibly as in you don’t want me to, or couldn’t possibly as in you’re happy that I already did?” Robb asks her with a sly knowing smile that lets the butterflies loose in her stomach.

 

“Couldn’t possibly as in I love you and I can’t wait to make this our home,” she says, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket so she can press her lips to his.

 

Though it is the middle of the day on a Wednesday and they are standing outside of a townhouse on Fifth Avenue, Robb smiles against her lips and weaves his hand into her hair. He kisses her masterfully, as though it is his sole mission to make her forget everything except what it feels like to be kissed by him. She submits to her amnesia happily and sighs against him as he wraps his other arm around her.

 

“Mrs. Stark, what will the neighbors say?” he says to her when he finally pulls away, not letting her quite out of his arms.

 

She looks up at him, _he is so very handsome_ , and strokes his nose playfully, “They’ll say that I married a brute, and he turned me into a rebel, and I never looked back.”

 

“Well if that’s the case…” he says and leans in to kiss her sweetly again. “Now, shall I show you where the children are going to sleep?” he asks, holding up the key.

 

“How many bedrooms do we need for the children we don’t yet have?” she asks, they had after all only been married for a month.

 

“Oh, you’ll see,” he says with a roguish smile and takes her into the double-wide townhouse.

 

It is an elegant home, with a grey stone exterior and a large winding staircase. There is a large parlor leading into a library, and a dining room large enough for the dinner parties they’d be throwing. There was a swimming pool in the basement and a few other sitting rooms scattered throughout the house.

 

When they had finished the tour she turns to him and says, “If you think we’re filling seven bedrooms, you’ve got another thing coming, handsome.”

 

“How about four?” he asks her with a gleam forming in his eye.

 

“Sounds reasonable,” she says, her cheeks flushing.

 

“Hmm, alright,” he says, as though she’s just commented on the weather. Then he smiles and throws her over his shoulder, “May as well start now,” he says as he climbs the stairs to the master bedroom.

 

_I think I’ll be very happy here._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I continue this into the 20s or stop here? Let me know what you think!


	9. Chapter 9

It had seemed to those in the Great War that they would never know a thing to so wholly change society such as that. They had not, however, anticipated that Prohibition would take hold.

 

It had started during the war, the teetotalers blaming the corruption of society for the Spanish Influenza and millions of deaths. No one imagined it would last afterwards, but as so often is the case, once the fear mongerers and fanatics take power they are not often willing to let it go.

 

So it occurred that the same society grand dames who once would have balked at a family who hadn’t settled before the civil war now found themselves rubbing elbows with the truly _new_ money. They were, after all, the ones who had all of the liquor.

 

It was rumored that there were a few old families too involved in this so-called Black Market but if anyone knew for sure, no one was telling.

 

***

 

Robb woke in a sweat. There was crying coming from the next room, and while he knew it was his infant son, in his dream it had been cries from the war.

 

Ella is up in a moment, clearly wanting to beat the nurses to him, and disappears out of the room. It was a nightly occurrence, one that Robb had gotten used to happily. Because every time Ella disappeared from that room, a moment later she would come back with _him_.

 

“Did you have something to tell us, little one?” Ella is cooing at him as she shuts the door and brings him back to their bed, “Is there a party we were meant to attend? You are so clever to remind us,” she says, babbling her incoherent banter she always takes up in the middle of the night to soothe him.

 

Robb would never tell her, but it soothed him too. He woke often with dreams of the war, so had she before Billy was born, but hearing her murmuring lovingly to their child calmed him in a way that nothing ever had.

 

He picked up the covers so that Ella could climb back in and she lay Billy down in between them. He knew that they weren’t really supposed to have him in here, in fact, most of their friends would never even think of waking with their children in the night, but Robb loved these quiet moments with his family more than anything.

 

He turns on his side as does Ella and he traces a line down his son’s forehead to the tip of his nose, causing the most breathtaking smile in the world.

 

“You love your Daddy, hmmm little one?” Ella asks.

 

Billy lets out a delighted little gurgle at the sound of her voice, another generation of men who adore her.

 

“And you, my beautiful wife, do you love his Daddy?” he asks her, pulling her closer so their heads can rest against one another.

 

She reaches up to stroke his cheek, and even half-asleep, his heart skips a beat, “More than sense tells me is possible.”

 

“If our son wasn’t here, I would find a way to remove any sense from your very being.”

 

“You’re a brute,” she says with a smile, and with a quick check to make sure Billy is happy, she falls asleep.

 

***

 

It was cool in the shade with the breeze coming off the ocean, lifting the opaque heat of the day. They had been at Winterfell for two weeks now and she and Sansa spent their days amongst the honeysuckles, coming up with games for little Theo as Billy and Babe slept.

 

Willem ‘Billy’ Stark and Margery ‘Babe’ Snow had been born within days of one another during the cruelest March anyone could remember. As though nature itself welcomed the new additions, the weather turned that same week, bringing about an early summer.

 

Having taken over his father’s business, Robb spent his week in the city, traveling every Friday with Jon to visit. She had offered to stay in the city, but Robb had insisted that _This is the way in families like ours_. She had thought that was fooey and she’d told him so, earning herself a kiss and his roguish smile.

 

“Are the Manderly sisters joining us this evening?” Ella asked Sansa dreamily.

 

All three children napped better in the fresh air, proof as much as anything that they were theirs, and she and Sansa often napped with them. Unlike most society mothers, they often relied on the nurses only on evenings out or when entertaining, and for a few hours every other day when they had one errand to run or another. Ella didn’t quite understand the girls of her generation who only saw their children once a day, and never at night.

 

“I believe so. It appears that Willa has a beau. Her father asked that I talk some sense into her. Apparently he’s rather new,” Sansa says with a roll of her clear blue eyes.

 

Her generation had moved on from the old ways after the war. Now, all Ella cared about was whether someone was bright and gay. She had never really given a fig if someone was the _right_ sort of person or not, it was just that before the war she had never been exposed to anyone but the right sort.

 

With the end of the war, the hemlines had gotten shorter, the parties had gotten livelier, and the liquor had somehow become more abundant. The police would never dare break up one of old Newport’s affairs, but whether that was out of respect or bribery she didn’t quite know.

 

“Deary me,” Ella said with a roll of her own. “Willa never was the sort to marry a pilgrim. I thought her father knew her better than that.”

 

She had always thought Mr. Manderlay to be rather an indulgent man, letting his daughter wear trousers and go about unaccompanied. _Perhaps he thought it was a faze._ It seemed the elder generation hadn’t realized how intrinsically hers had changed after they were. The papers had taken to calling them _lost_ but perhaps that simply sounded better to them than _free_.

 

“We’ll give the girl some advice, she won’t take it and that will be that,” Sansa says as if she is bored of the subject already.

 

“What’s gotten into _you_?” Ella asks her, because it is unlike her kind friend to be so dismissive.

 

Sansa lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry, I’m being an utter cow and I know it. –“

 

She stopped when Theo started giggling. Neither of them had realized he was awake.

 

“Cows have utters, Mama!” he said as though it were the cleverest thing anyone had ever said and his mother and aunt laughed with him indulgently.

 

“That is true, my love,” Sansa said, pulling him into her lap and kissing his black curls.

 

He was a complete mix of his parents, with Sansa’s long limbs and Jon’s curly hair, her beautiful blue eyes framed by his long lashes.

 

Ella had the feeling there was more on Sansa’s mind so she turned to Theo and said conspiratorially, “Darling… you’ll never guess what I found.”

 

His eyes lit up at the thought of a secret, “What??”

 

“I found _blue wildflowers_ over by the side of the house. Do you think you could pick some for your dear, old aunt?” she asked him, though she had only turned twenty that year.

 

“I’ll get you a _whole_ armful!” he promised.

 

“Just stay where we can see you, alright?” she asked. He nodded as he toggled away on his determined little legs.

 

“Now what has gotten you positively bovine?” she asks Sansa once they were alone.

 

“Jon isn’t coming this weekend, apparently he has to work,” Sansa lamented.

 

“Oh darling, it’ll be alright. Robb and I will take you out for a gay old time and you’ll hardly even miss him…” Ella said, though she didn’t quite believe it herself. Sansa was just as unsupportive of the situation as she was. She too had offered to stay in the city.

 

“I just… hate being apart from him. It reminds me of the early days when all of you were gone. It was the loneliest time of my life, Ella,” Sansa says wiping a tear from her eye.

 

“Oh Dove, come here!” Ella says as though speaking to Theo, gathering his mother in her arms. “If there is one thing I know it is that those boys love us _madly_. We’ll all be together again soon. I promise.”

 

***

 

Robb wallowed in the emptiness of the townhouse. The staff was there of course, as it was still his parent’s staff who journeyed to Winterfell in the summers, but Billy and Ella were gone and he hated their home without them. It was as grand as it ever was, but the many floors and bedrooms taunted him when they were not there to fill them.

 

He was in his study when the butler came in to announce an arrival. “He knows who I am Cassel” Jon said with a clap on his back. The English butler bristled at the informality (he didn’t quite approve of Jon or Robb, despite their lineages, and only had agreed to the post because of Ella) but nodded at Robb anyway and left them.

 

“Shall we to work?” Jon asks once they are alone.

 

“It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” Robb asks, looking out at the dark sky.

 

“The Canadians are always early,” Jon shrugs. “Come on, I’ll drive.”

 

Fifth Avenue is quiet as they head out to his car. After all, it was nearly midnight on a Wednesday in the dead of summer when all of society had retired to Long Island or Newport.

 

“Umber told us to wait,” Robb said when they neared the East River.

 

“Yeah well, you’re the boss Stark,” Jon said with a grin.

 

“Don’t tell him that,” Robb said with one of his own.

 

“He just worries is all. Whether it’s about our safety or that we’ll realize we don’t need him so much, I’ll let you decide,” Jon said.

 

Jon pulled over at the side and the crossed the rest of the way in the dark.

 

“I told you boys to wait for me,” a gruff man said when they approached.

 

“What did I say about calling me boy?” Robb says with a near growl.

 

“You may be the boss, Stark, but you’re greener than that grass at Winterfell, don’t think I forget it,” the old man grumbled.

 

Jon nearly attacked him but Robb steadied him with a hand on his arm, “There’ll come a time when I’ll teach you a new lesson, Umber. Best forget it and make room for when I do.”

 

“Robb,” Jon said and pointed to the water’s edge. It was a wonder Jon had seen it at all, in the dark night with no lights.

 

Robb grimaces at Umber and he and Jon head down to meet the barge.

 

“What is dead may never die,” Robb says in greeting.

 

“But rises again, harder and stronger,” the captain says with a thick Newfoundland accent.

 

“You have what I asked for?” Robb asks him.

 

“Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” the man returns causing Robb to grin.

 

He and Jon hop on board, looking at the grim, hardened sailors as they are lead through the boat. There are stacks and stacks of boxes and Robb points to one at random. The captain nods at one of his men and the man opens it.

 

There, were bottles and bottles of scent bottles. He picked up one and handed it to Jon, “Use it, you need it.”

 

Jon smirks and looks at the clear liquid in the pale green glass bottle. Without a second thought, he sprays it directly into his mouth.

 

 _“_ Well damn it if that isn’t the finest gin North of Tennessee,” he said with a wolfish grin.


	10. Chapter 10

In the summer of 1920, Newport, Rhode Island witnessed it’s first invasion since the British had come in their red coats over 150 years prior. This was no military advancement, but it was a coup all the same.

 

That was the summer that all of the society girls, the new wives of Wall Street’s titans were either round with child or had a newborn in a basinet. It appeared that those who had suffered most acutely during the Great War had gained an understanding of how random life can be, and how quickly death could come. And so, some only just back from their honeymoon’s began to decorate nursery’s and scour the ladies magazines for the very best English nannies.

 

Ella Stark, nee Ella Baratheon, had, since she’d arrived in New York in the Autumn of 1916, been something of an inspiration to her contemporaries, and so that summer, girls who only a season earlier would have been perfectly happy to see their children once a day at bath time, took to strolling by the ocean with their parasols and their prims, and seeking shady trees where they might let their little ones wriggle their toes in the open air. It had become perfectly obvious to everyone that she and her sister-in-law Sansa Snow, nee Stark, would not attend a garden party if their children were not invited, and so, since it was not a _true_ party without these beauties, guest lists were expanded to include the most junior members of the leisure class.

 

It was all rather _improper_ , the old ladies thought, but they never would have said it aloud. Not when the young Mrs. Stark sat, her back against the trunk of a willow, with her son Billy in her arms. It was hard for them to call her improper when she looked like a Madonna, poised and immaculate.

 

Even still it was a bending of the rules, which was very _en_ _vogue_ that Summer. In fact, if you’d asked anyone they would have had no hesitation in telling you that many a more serious rule was broken under those willow trees that Summer, amidst that quick tempo-ed jazz and the popping of Champagne brought in from the Continent.

 

***

 

"No I want Auntie Ella to take me!" his nephew Theo said to Jon.  
  
"Auntie Ella is tired, Theo," Jon said, gesturing to where Robb's wife sat against the great tree trunk, rocking their son in his little bassinet.  
  
The two and a half year old looked at his father like he was crazy before running over to his aunt.  
  
"Are you too tired to take me down to the beach Auntie?" He asked, his voice shifting from stubborn to sweet.  
  
Ella looked at him and stroked his nose playfully, "I'm never too tired for my handsome beau," she said and scrunched her nose at Jon when he rolled his eyes, "Do you have Billy?" She asked him.  
  
Robb crossed over and plopped down onto the grass and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, "Yes, I think between the two of us we can handle a sleeping baby."  
  
"Doubtful," Jon joked as Theo 'helped' his aunt stand up.  
  
"Shall we walk by the garden or by the rocky ledge?" Ella asked him.  
  
The toddler looked up at her, as though she had just asked _the_ question and says, "The garden, so I can pick flowers for Mama."  
  
"I think that's a splendid idea, darling," Ella says, as though he's very wise indeed and he takes her hand in his as they set off to the path that would lead to the garden.

 

Jon sighed as Robb took up rocking the bassinet, looking down at his beloved sleeping son.

 

“He isn’t getting enough discipline, the girls spoil him,” Jon grumbled.

 

“He’s two,” Robb said with a smile. While it was true that the girls _were_ spoiling Theo, he was a sweet good-natured child who always listened when it counted.

 

“Still.” Jon mumbled.

 

“You’re just jealous that he wanted to go with Ella,” Robb said knowingly.

 

“Well why shouldn’t I be? Aren’t you sick of this? I’m sick of this.” Jon said, “They are like their own little club, the girls and the children and it’s as though we’re intruders.”

 

Robb rolled his eyes, “It is _not._ You saw how happy Theo was to see you, and you know Sansa and Ella are always over the moon. They don’t like the separation any more than we do. But they are together constantly, it only makes sense that they would have a routine we don’t quite fit into.”

 

“So you’re alright with it?” Jon asked him.

 

“Of course not. But that’s the way it is,” Robb said, looking back at Billy.

 

They were only at Winterfell on the weekends, and both men cherished their time there more than anything. Often when they came, the girls put on a big dinner or had a full social calendar for them in the evenings, while their days were spent at the beach or playing tennis, but this weekend his niece Babe had come down with some sort of illness and Sansa had caught it as well. He, Jon and Ella had been tasked with keeping themselves and the boys away from them so as not to spread it and he knew that Jon was missing his wife and daughter terribly.

 

“Well what if… what if we moved the business here?” Jon asked curiously.

 

“I think you’ll find Wall Street a little hard to move…” Robb said.

 

“Not that business, the real business. It’s just as easy, more so probably, for deliveries to come here. Plus in the summer time, this is where most of the stock is going anyway…” Jon surmised.

 

“But I have the office…how would I… -“ Robb started.

 

“You’re the boss,” Jon said.

 

“Are you aware that you always tell me that when you are bossing me around?” Robb asked him.

 

Jon only grinned, knowing he’d been convinced.

 

***

 

The bright afternoon light sparkled through her tear-drop diamond earring as she fastened it in her ear, the finishing touch on her outfit for the evening. She wore an embellished champagne colored drop-waist dress that left her newly tanned calves deliciously uncovered, a gold pair of strappy heels on her feet and her golden curls fastened with a diamond hair comb at the nape of her neck. Her lips were bare, though darker from the sun and she didn’t need the rouge the other girls of her class had taken to wearing, when only a half-generation before it would have only been _working_ girls who dared.

 

“Well if it isn’t the most beautiful girl in all of Newport,” her dashing husband said as she made her way onto the terrace, where her bright family was amassed all ready for a party.

 

“Oh no, that title certainly has to go to little Babe,” she said and crossed over to where Robb was holding his niece in his arms.

 

The little girl had recovered from her illness and had been as delighted as her mother and her aunt that Robb and Jon had decided to spend the rest of the summer in Wintertown. She was rarely set down these days, between her grandfather, father and uncle. It appeared that she, like her mother, was already capable of ensnaring men with almost no effort extended.

 

Ella trailed her finger down little Babe’s button nose and smiled at the enchanting gurgle she let out when she recognised her beloved aunt.

 

A cold champagne glass appeared in her hand along with a kiss on the cheek from Jon.

 

“I believe you two are on a mission to steal my children away,” he said with a smile. Whatever had been ailing him earlier in the summer had been cast away as soon as his and Robb’s trunks had been delivered earlier that week.

 

“Oh don’t say that my dear, dear brother,” Ella said, hooking her arm around his shoulder, though she had to stand on her tiptoes to do so. He smiled at her and his arm came around her waist so she raised her champagne glass to him to cheers. “For we certainly intend on bringing Sansa with us as well,” she said with a cheeky smile as their glasses clinked.

 

Little Theo chuckled along with the adults, though he neither heard nor understood the joke, but it didn’t really matter when the summer air felt so light, and the buzz of conversation was so intoxicating that no one quite cared that it was past his bedtime.

 

All along the Newport shore, gatherings such as this were happening. It would be a long night, the sky hadn’t yet turned purple, and many a glass would be raised, and a shoe or two would be lost after hours of dancing. That very night, in fact, was the night that it was rumoured that a certain oil heiress drove her Daddy’s Rolls Royce into the Atlantic over a row she’d had with a boxer from Queens whom no one thought she should be dating anyhow. But many would tell you, that if they could choose any terrace in Newport on which to begin their evening, it would be the one at Winterfell.

 

It was, after all, where the champagne was the most fine, the conversation was the most witty, and the girls, even as mothers, really were the prettiest that Newport had ever seen. It seemed, to the summer residents of Newport, that Winterfell, like the sun, seemed to radiate an energy all its own, and it was only years later that those who had the good sense to look back on that summer would realise that they were all, already, in its orbit.


End file.
